Flaky Gamers

[DRD1812]

I've got a comic on the subject over here (http://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/flaky-fighter), but the TLDR is this: I'm convinced that the problem of gamers flaking out is an inevitability. Rather than curse the darkness, I say it's better to light the candle of narrative flexibility. In other words, you can save game night by changing the way you structure sessions. If you game with busy people, plan sessions around open-ended problems like tomb robbing rather than the big reveal that the BBEG is really Bob the Flaky Fighter's long lost half-brother or whatever. It may not be the sweeping epic that you imagine, but it's a story built to accommodate real people rather than paragons of perfect punctuality.

What do you think? Is open-ended content an unacceptable affront to the way you run your game, or do you think there might be something to this concept?

[KorvinStarmast]

Can you provide a working definition of the term 'flaky gamers' so that I can consider the (alleged) problem that you are addressing? It's not registering.

What's wrong with "this is a good stopping point, people have to get to bed/work, we'll pick it up here next session ..." as a general approach?

[Tanarii]

I ran into this problem recently with a group of five personal friends. Where three of them, the ones that asked me to DM for them on Friday nights (or Saturdays as a backup), were all very good friends who did lots of stuff together. Often planned for Friday nights or all weekend ...

The other two players were very frustrated, especially since one of them had to plan a 40 mile drive to attend. Net result was the game completely flaked out by 5th level.

[willdaBEAST]

Can you provide a working definition of the term 'flaky gamers' so that I can consider the (alleged) problem that you are addressing? It's not registering.

What's wrong with "this is a good stopping point, people have to get to bed/work, we'll pick it up here next session ..." as a general approach?

I think the OP is mostly referring to when a player can't make the session at all, or a series of sessions. That makes character development and plot threads connected to characters much harder to integrate.

I've ran into that problem with my own campaign, but mine runs a little deeper. Some of my players don't seem to recognize when I'm trying to engage their character by filling in some backstory details or connecting them to the campaign. I get blank stares even when the information I'm expanding upon was in the backstory that the player wrote. I think the reality is that a lot of players aren't engaged or invested in characterization, it's out of their comfort zone. An episodic narrative is probably more suited to the normal player than a story you need to invest yourself in. I think about my campaign and the game I play in all the time, it's unrealistic to expect that of others. If you're fostering a group of like minded individuals and they have all bought into it (session 0), then I think you have a legitimate gripe when someone bails on a few sessions.

Personally I love books with complicated plots and large casts of characters, same with TV shows that reward you for paying attention and have interesting character arcs. I try to make my campaign replicate that, but it requires investment and active participation from all the players. I've had to tone down those tendencies to accommodate my group and that leaves me a little bitter. The way I see it, the price of entry for me to DM is to indulge me in the kind of story I want to help weave. Otherwise I'm facilitating a good time for everyone else at my own expense and will burn out. I don't think most players realize how much of a collaboration a campaign can be. The more you put into it, the more you can get back.

Back to the topic of the OP, I think both ways of running a game are equally valid. Everyone will have their own preferences. Personally I'm not interested in running a game that a player can step in and out of freely, but like you point out, players have lives too and you can't get upset when they prioritize the real world over your campaign.

[clash]

Both are definitely acceptable. The solution I found to this was to run the campaign like a tv show, where each session was an episode that while progressing the overall plot was more or less self-contained. I could do back story episodes for when a character showed up or do some other episode if they didnt, the same way a character might now be in every episode in a tv show.

[Knaight]

In my experience the single biggest factor in determining whether the whole group can reliably meet is group size. Campaign structures which involve every single player being there for every single session work fine when you have 2-3 players and a GM. They don't work nearly as well for 5-6 players and a GM.

I'm not opposed to structural changes; I even currently run games around them (I set up a one shot club for whoever shows up among a decently large group of friends I invite) - but different campaigns have different appeals, and giving up the benefits of a continuous group to play campaigns about tomb raiding with whoever shows up is just unpalatable.

[Kane0]

My current group has sort of fallen apart due to this as well.

We used to be able to do pretty much any saturday all day, but nowadays three of us now have a significant other to take into account, two of us have an hour or more travel time and the last is just losing interest and wants to try a new system every time we meet.

Sometimes the hardest thing is to admit it, that things just aren't the same as they used to be and it isn't feasible to keep trying. From my experience the thing that helps stave this off the most is the 'anchor' player. The reliable one that everything (and everyone) else can be organised around and that always shows the interest and availability for the group as a whole. With an anchor individuals might come and and go but the group keeps playing, session after session, year after year. It's a burden to be sure, especially since the anchor is also usually the DM. But as the saying goes, if you build it they will come.
At least until it's time to weigh anchor.

[DRD1812]

The way I see it, the price of entry for me to DM is to indulge me in the kind of story I want to help weave... I don't think most players realize how much of a collaboration a campaign can be.

Let me preface this by saying I'm honest-to-god not trying to be a jerk here. I share your preference for "complicated plots and large casts of characters." However, don't those two statements I quoted seem to be a little at odds? I mean, if you're truly running a collaborative story, don't the players' preference for a more episodic structure count too? That disconnect between grand narrative expectations and real world compromise is exactly the issue I'm trying to get at. If you've had to tone down that style already, maybe it's a sign that the group as a whole can't support that kind of play. Rather than trying to change people to accommodate a campaign, I'm suggesting that it will cause less heartache to adjust the campaign to accommodate people.

[willdaBEAST]

Let me preface this by saying I'm honest-to-god not trying to be a jerk here. I share your preference for "complicated plots and large casts of characters." However, don't those two statements I quoted seem to be a little at odds? I mean, if you're truly running a collaborative story, don't the players' preference for a more episodic structure count too? That disconnect between grand narrative expectations and real world compromise is exactly the issue I'm trying to get at. If you've had to tone down that style already, maybe it's a sign that the group as a whole can't support that kind of play. Rather than trying to change people to accommodate a campaign, I'm suggesting that it will cause less heartache to adjust the campaign to accommodate people.

I'm not taking any offense to your thoughts (I encourage them!) and I recognize that the two approaches are at odds. I've already adjusted my campaign to accommodate some of my less invested players and I've also realized the toll it takes on me personally. As a DM I don't overly prepare, but I still care about the story and it takes effort and time to organize each session. When that time and effort is going solely to please the players, at the expense of the kind of campaign I want to participate in, DMing becomes a job. A job I'm not being paid for. I'm happy to compromise and meet my players halfway, but that works both ways.

To give you context, I've been running Curse of Strahd for 5 players (3 of my closest friends and 2 others I've known for at least a decade or more) since last April and now that the players are level 10 they're nearing their final confrontation with Strahd. I'm happy to acquiesce to the group and see the campaign through, but I'm not willing to continue the next stage of the campaign in that manner. It's not worth it for me. I understand that DMs often put in way more work than the players, but the discrepancy is too skewed for my taste. For me personally, I want players that embrace roleplaying and become invested in developing their characters. 2-3 members of the group aren't making any recognizable progress in that area, so I think I'm better off finding players that either already enjoy that type of gameplay or are more inclined to try.

We've both evaluated our situations and made opposite choices, I think either are valid.

[SylvanPrincess]

Can you provide a working definition of the term 'flaky gamers' so that I can consider the (alleged) problem that you are addressing? It's not registering.

What's wrong with "this is a good stopping point, people have to get to bed/work, we'll pick it up here next session ..." as a general approach?

He/She refers to players who are known to play for several levels, then "uh... I just dont know if I want to play anymore" and *poof* gone. We have a player that does this pretty much every campaign, and usually it is the initial blow that falters our campaign before it eventually withers away. We try to play for weeks after, but it isnt always easy to replace a player and once a group drops to 2 people... I dont know. It sucks.

[KorvinStarmast]

Rather than trying to change people to accommodate a campaign, I'm suggesting that it will cause less heartache to adjust the campaign to accommodate people. Every campaign worth the name that I've played does that. Most of the campaigns I have DM'd are as much sandbox as there are any nodes for a plot. I never liked railroading players, and if they went off into the wild blue yonder I start with random monster and NPC encounters until they want to do something else. When I used modules and published adventures, it's not hard to adapt in my experience. Tossing out extra clues never hurts.

He/She refers to players who are known to play for several levels, then "uh... I just dont know if I want to play anymore" and *poof* gone. OK, for that kind of player there is no solution since they don't care enough to play for long enough for it to matter.

[ErHo]

I'm in the same boat, life is busy especially around the holidays.

Being a grown up sucks, thats why I play D&D


Glad I'm not alone!

[DRD1812]

We've both evaluated our situations and made opposite choices, I think either are valid.

Cheers. I hope you find the right group for your next campaign. :)

[DRD1812]

Yeesh... This is a perennial freaking problem. One of the GMs in my group posted this poll on Facebook over the weekend:

How do you guys want to handle scheduling? I personally would rather have as many players as possible at each session since this is a shorter run.


Play with at least 5

Play with at least 4 players

Play only if everyone is available


The thing is that I agree with him. I would also rather have as many players as possible at each session, but cat herding is freaking hard. My opinion is almost always "smaller party is better than no game."

[Malifice]

I've got a comic on the subject over here (http://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/flaky-fighter), but the TLDR is this: I'm convinced that the problem of gamers flaking out is an inevitability. Rather than curse the darkness, I say it's better to light the candle of narrative flexibility. In other words, you can save game night by changing the way you structure sessions. If you game with busy people, plan sessions around open-ended problems like tomb robbing rather than the big reveal that the BBEG is really Bob the Flaky Fighter's long lost half-brother or whatever. It may not be the sweeping epic that you imagine, but it's a story built to accommodate real people rather than paragons of perfect punctuality.

What do you think? Is open-ended content an unacceptable affront to the way you run your game, or do you think there might be something to this concept?

Player doesnt turn up the session, he fades into the background and gets no XP for the session.

Thats how I do it.

[Finlam]

I find that if the host provides food, it greatly reduces flakiness. i.e. for the cost of 3 medium pizzas, a 2 liter coke, and a delivery fee + tip, you can have players that are happy, fed and on-time.

The trick is two-fold: food needs to be ready when you plan to start the session, and you need to order just enough so that players who are late have reason to believe they may not get as much as they'd like.

You're doing it out of the kindness of your heart and your desire to be a good host, but it is the most effective meta-method for reducing flakiness.

[Arcangel4774]

I find a good way to deal with this is have flakey players' characters be doing something off screen.

Guard the caravan while some do a quest. Deal with some urgent sidequest that sets up a later plot point when the player comes back. Hell the could even be captured and become an objective for other players.

A good way to make episodic play into a story is to make the players into an army, resistance, or other guild. They have missions that often tie into a goal or have reaccuring enemies/allies that let them progress an overarching story.

[Avonar]

I think this is something that can be addressed be making sure everyone is 100% sure they can make the games. I have recently started a Yawning Portal campaign, so being that they are dungeons I made sure to ask everyone beforehand whether they believe they can make each game. I'm not going to get annoyed if someone can't do the occasional one but I've turned down people because they can't be sure they can regularly make games. If that doesn't work with the campaign I'm planning then unfortunately, I can't accept you.

However, for the more plot/character based campaign I have, if someone can't make it then I will often give them something plot relevant that they were doing. A sandbox setting is much more forgiving.